


Hornet and the Godseeker Trials

by Kinni



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Godtuner Hornet, Gen, Growing Stronger, Multiple Realities, battles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 19:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16225343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kinni/pseuds/Kinni
Summary: The infection is no more, but that doesn't mean there is no more danger for the bugs of Hallownest. The Godseekers have arrived, and their ritual would endanger everything that has been built up with so many sacrifices. Hornet decides to stop it, and ends up as the focal point of the ritual itself. Will she be able to overcome the trials and save Hallownest?





	1. The Godtuner

Even after Hallownest was saved, the work Hornet had to do was far from over. She wasn't suited to helping with the rebuilding and the recovery as the bugs tried to carve out a new life. However, as a protector in the shadows and a holder of secrets, Hornet found herself dealing with many of the problems that cropped up in that new society.

Sometimes, it involved a bug stumbling upon some sort of soul artifact and being entranced by it. Sometimes, it involved some sort of mutated abomination hiding out at the depths of the world. More often than not, Hornet's skill in combat was called for, but often her knowledge of the subtle magic of the Weavers ended up being important.

She didn't mind doing any of that. Now that the little ghost had apparently gotten rid of the infection forever, Hornet found herself strangely out of balance. That had been something which hung over her head from the moment she became aware, but now it was gone.

Also gone was the need to stand guard over the King's Brand. Now that their role was finally over, every last vestige of the White King seemed to be slowly disappearing, almost like a dream.

Still, Hornet didn't feel like relaxing in her newfound freedom. Protecting that emerging society was what she eventually decided to do. She had fought for a long time in order to save that world. She had chosen such, and even now, the desire to protect remained within her.

And it was while doing such that Hornet stumbled onto a ritual that would be inextricably connected with her from them on.

+0+

Hornet realized that something was wrong due to a disturbance in the Fate-Weave she had set up in a hidden place in Deepnest. Checking it, Hornet deduced that the cause was some sort of powerful ritual magic.

She hadn't expected to see something like that again after the Little Ghost's business with the Grimm Troupe had concluded, but things weren't that simple. While that particular ritual had very little effect in the order of Hallownest, being more like a very involved theater performance, the ritual she had caught traces of was very different.

It was a ritual that seemed to mess around with time and space, dreams and souls. It was still relatively weak, but it was clearly the type of ritual that kept continuously gaining strength, to the point where it could even do the impossible.

It was dangerous. Something that Hornet should definitely interfere with, so she spent the following days slowly tracking down the source of the disturbances. It was slow and hard work, as whoever was behind it seemed to be acting mostly through a closed dreamspace, making identification difficult.

Still, there had to be a connection with the real world, otherwise the ritual wouldn't be able to affect it, so eventually Hornet managed to track down that special connection to a very secluded place, the junk pit below the city of tears.

Heading there, Hornet easily managed to find a suspicious spot. It was some kind of steel coffin, sealed with chains and a lock.

It was a simple lock, the kind she could easily open with her needle, but before she did that, Hornet decided to prepare herself for the case of a battle. She took out her life thread, which was her greatest weapon together with her needle, and she attacked one end of it to another weapon, one that different from those others, she had gotten fairly recently.

It was a nail. One that had once been a common nail, but it later had been repeatedly reforged and tested in battle against a multitude of powerful foes, to the point where it could basically be considered a legendary weapon.

It was the nail of the Little Ghost, the only remaining trace of him in the world with the exception of his broken mask. Hornet's collection of it had been mostly motivated by responsibility, as leaving a weapon like that loose was too dangerous, but she could not deny that it was a nice reminder of that little being, and what it managed to accomplish despite everything. It was comforting in a way.

Usually, Hornet didn't need to use that weapon, but considering the possible danger level of the situation, it was better to leave nothing to chance. Properly equipped, Hornet proceeded to direct her needle into the lock and skillfully messed around with it until a pop was heard and the lock fell to the ground.

It was followed by the chains popping off in a strangely theatrical way, almost as if they had been designed specifically to do so. Finally, the coffin fell to the side with a resounding bang, opening up in the process, and making its occupant nearly explode out of it.

And the occupant was a big bug. Not huge, but certainly on the upper end of size. She (because Hornet felt like she was a female) was wearing a bronze mask, with an elaborate crest. She had small legs ending in digitigrades and a hard shell covering on the upper back.

Still, all of that was only perceived by Hornet for an instant, before her attention was stolen by something that fell along with the bug. It was a small device that didn't have an unusual appearance, looking like just an elaborate charm, but the feeling it gave Hornet was that of something that was part of the world itself, almost like a living being that had achieved oneness with the universe.

It was definitely powerful, and definitely something she should be concerned about, so Hornet sent her thread to wrap around the thing and bring it to her.

As soon as the device reached her hands, Hornet realized that she had made a mistake. But she also realized that there had been no way to avoid it. That thing... The Godtuner, as she suddenly Knew that was its name... It had an almost inconceivable level of attraction towards her.

Light covered Hornet's body, and she heard a few words, which sounded as if they were being spoken by countless voices at once.

“Seek the gods of Hallownest. Tune their power. Through their strength, ascend.”

And in the next moment, the light disappeared, together with Hornet herself.


	2. Journey of the Ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fighting, basically.

When Hornet came to, she was standing in a strange place. It was a long corridor leading into darkness. Her surroundings held the familiar architecture of Hallownest, but not of one location in particular.

There was the heavy masonry of the City of Tears mixed together with the vegetation of Greenpath, the sheer rock of the howling cliffs, the bare earth of Deepnest and everything else. It shape of the corridor didn't look like anything from any portion of Hallownest, however. The closest to it being the Wyrm's Corpse that she had been so familiar with.

It didn't look like a real place, but more like a fusion of ideas of what the city was about.

Hornet could feel her body, which seemed to be perfectly normal in contrast with the strange nature of her surroundings. Within it, she could feel the Godtuner, which had apparently fused inextricably with her essence, but her instincts foretold that it wasn't any sort of danger to her. Not directly, at least.

Not having any other choice, Hornet decided to proceed forward (as behind her was only an uncrossable nothingness). And even though she could feel her steps, the path she was taking felt strangely dreamlike, constantly shifting and changing.

Before she could even realize it, Hornet had suddenly arrived at a battlefield. The paths in front and behind were suddenly closed by gates which were just as chaotic as the rest of the path, and in the middle of the room was a slumbering Gruz Mother. In her skin Hornet could see the telltale signs of the infection.

There really was just a single thing to do, so Hornet sent her needle to pierce the monster, which woke up with a screech and sent itself towards her in a tackle. Pulling herself to the ceiling with a quick thread, Hornet avoided the obvious attack, then jumped off the ceiling towards the monster, putting all the strength in her body into an attack with the needle that drilled through the entirely of the Gruz.

It screeched once more upon defeat, before disappearing. Hornet felt the Godtuner within her vibrate in a melodic manner. Then Hornet saw something like a memory, in which Little Ghost was fighting that same opponent.

When it was over, the gate in front disappeared, so Hornet returned to her walking.

After a bit, there was another battlefield, that time containing Mighty Hegemol. Or rather, as she soon saw, a maggot wearing Hegemol's armor. The enemy immediately attacked by jumping at her and trying to slam its mace onto her. Hornet jumped backwards and realized that it would be difficult to harm the opponent through the armor, however, the helmet it was using had eye holes.

That would never work on the real Hegemol, but against a fake, it would probably be enough to target those weak points. As the enemy was raising its mace again, Hornet sent a long thread snaking into the helmet, and moved it around the body of the maggot within the shell. With a mental cry of 'Sharpen!', she pulled on her thread, slashing the fragile body of the maggot apart.

The armor fell to the ground, and again the Godtuner reacted. Similarly, Hornet once again saw a scene in her mind, this time of the Little Ghost facing off against that same enemy she had just defeated.

It seemed like, in this strange realm, Hornet was now fighting against the same opponents her half-sibling had fought on his journey. She didn't know what was the meaning of that, or what the final result would be, but Hornet knew that the enemies would only grow stronger.

The next battle was against a large infected Mawlek. She dodged his acid spit and slashed him to death with her nail, as he didn't have many vulnerabilities to target with the needle. Then there was a Vengefly King, which was swiftly dispatched after flying into a trap of hardened and sharpened thread she had put in its path.

Then she fought a copy of herself, who went down to a vertical nail slash aimed at a place Hornet knew she would go in that situation. Then, there was a huge Moss Charger, which she killed by targeting each of the hidden component creatures with needle pierces one at a time.

Then she faced the Mantis Lords, who proved to be much smarter opponents than any of the others, working together and countering most of her attacks. Eventually she managed to whittle them down enough for the trio to return to their thrones and let her pass.

After that she fought against the creature Nosk, which fell to a few well aimed needle attacks. Then there was a bug infected by crystal, which could shoot lasers. The crystal was hard, but the parts not covered by it were slashed into oblivion.

And so it went. Hornet had to use her agility to the max to deal with the teleporting and soul projectiles of the infected leaders of the Soul Sanctum. She had to pay close attention to not be mobbed by the group of Watcher Knight shells. She had to attack with needle, thread and nail to face the collector along with his monsters.

After that, things only became harder. Loyal Ogrim was a hardy and fast opponent, and their battle lasted for quite a while. The Flukemarm kept giving birth to Flukefeys without end, forcing Hornet to constantly use her threads as an all-around defense and giving her little opportunities to attack.

Hornet could tell that she was getting stronger as she went along, or perhaps it should be said that she was getting back into shape, her battle senses refined more and more by the combat with those varying enemies.

She also watched the journey of Little Ghost, and saw him getting stronger and stronger, obtaining new equipment and learning spells as well as powerful nail techniques. Over time she was getting a new respect for the small warrior.

That inspired her to be more creative in her battles. The strange jellyfish seemed invulnerable until she managed to charge her needle with her opponent's electricity and use it against it. The infected vessel was defeated by Hornet stealing its nail with a precise thread manipulation at the critical moment.

And it was just in time that she managed such, because after that, Hornet had to face against the powerful Hive Knight, which she could say for sure was simply a better fighter than her.

Ever since the first moment of the fight, she was overwhelmed. The opponent moved fast enough to disappear from sight, and attacked from odd angles with powerful blows that that knocked her back and harmed her even through her blocks.

Trying to counter also didn't work, as he was more skilled at pure nail skill than her, their exchanges always ending up with Hornet in the losing position. Using her threads didn't help either, as his skill in manipulating honey served as a counter against all of the more aggressive uses of her tricky weapon. Not to mention how he could vomit out a whole squad of bees to attack her, bees which were far hardier than they looked.

Hornet would have been killed quickly had she not fought all those previous battles in sequence, and even then, her heightened focus was only enough to keep her alive, while her wounds quickly multiplied.

She wouldn't give up, though. If her opponent was stronger, then she just had to force herself to do better and better, until she surpassed him.

First things first, Hornet spread incredibly thin threads over the entire battlefield. The effort of doing such a thing felt like needles stabbing her brain, but it worked. When the Knight dashed, the threads he torn in the process indicated where he was going, like a radar. Hornet continually spread more of them to replace the torn ones, of course.

Second, Hornet once again attacked with both needle and nail at once, swinging her thread around to make relentless attacks on the enemy, trying to overwhelm him with the sheer volume of her offensive.

Those two things together made the battle more equal, but weren't quite enough when the opponent started focusing more on nailplay in a defensive stance, not to mention that she was running out of energy fast.

Hornet needed more speed, so she made even more threads and wrapped herself in them, before connecting those threads to walls and ceiling and using them to pull herself at insane speeds. It was painful, as her shell was grinded by the threads and her organs were rattled by the impacts, but Hornet could handle it.

Putting everything into one last rush, Hornet launched herself explosively all around the room, attacking blindly at the position her threads told her the opponent was. It was a storm of blows, until she felt her needle dislodge the opponent's nail, which she followed up with a nail slash that decapitated the enemy.

Hornet fell to the ground, breathing hard. She was hurting everywhere, and her eyes were unfocused. Thankfully enough, the next opponent would only appear after she walked down the path some more, so she had time to rest and recover.

She then saw the fight of Little Ghost against that same enemy, and realized once more just how strong he really was.

+0+

Eventually Hornet felt herself to be recovered enough to move forward again. A childhood in the Deepnest had done wonders to train her ability to recover from injuries, after all.

She resumed her walk, wondering about which other enemies she would have to face. She didn't know most about the journey of the Little Ghost, but she knew that he had fought against the Hollow Knight, a prospect that she didn't know how to feel about. Neither did she know how to feel about possibly facing the Radiance herself.

Then Hornet reached the next battlefield, and she was surprised to see that it was also the last battlefield, as there was no path forward from there. And the enemy who was inside wasn't the Hollow Knight, and neither it was the Radiance, but instead the Traitor Lord of the mantises.

The fight started pretty much immediately. The Traitor Lord dashed forward, swiping with his claws. Hornet could feel the sheer power of the attack, so she parried in a way to borrow strength for the hit to move sideways. She threw the nail in a slash at the body of the mantis, who responded by jumping up and diving at her.

From there on, the fight became an interesting contrast to the previous one. While the Hive Knight was skilled and had varied abilities, the Traitor Lord overwhelmed her with pure power.

Even doing her best to parry the enemy attacks, Hornet soon started to feel her arms losing strength from enduring those hits. Even dodging as much as she could and using the same technique as before to move at high speeds, she couldn't avoid being grazed by some of the attacks, specially the near invisible wind blades.

And while she was able to cause many injuries to the opponent's body, he seemed to disregard them completely, still moving with the same speed and power no matter how many times he was cut, or where.

Neither the needle or the nail seemed to be capable of causing enough damage to matter, and in contrast, Hornet herself was weakening little by little.

It was then that the Traitor Lord decided to finish things. Slamming both claws into the ground repeatedly, he created a shock wave that swept up the soil and air, turning it into a wave of debris.

Hornet retreated the most she could, but soon found that there was no opening she could sneak through. It was a solid wave of death.

There was only one thing she could do. Almost instinctually, she wrapped herself up in as many layers of her thread as she could produce. She jumped straight at the wave and shouted “Harden!”, unleashing all the energy she could muster into making the greatest defense.

A moment later, she hit the wave, and her senses were thrown into chaos. She didn't know up or down, she lost feeling of her own body, she became deaf, and she started to black out into unconsciousness.

Then she hit the ground, which jarred her out of it. By sheer will and focus, she forced herself to stand up, as the battle wasn't over yet. Her entire body cried out in pain of every flavor, her legs were barely able to support her weight, and she could feel her own blood soaking into the threads.

However, she saw the Traitor Lord heaving, apparently from the effort of his attack. At that moment, she lost control of herself. Her sight turned red, and she could only think of one thing: Kill or be killed.

With a shout that sounded almost like a roar, Hornet threw the needle at the opponent, letting it unwrap from around herself in the process. The needle penetrated right through the opponent's eye and lodged itself in there, causing him to roar in pain.

Hornet, still mostly wrapped up in thread, pulled herself with both physical strength and all the power she could put on the thread, flying towards the Traitor Lord. Stepping on his face, she jumped over and then under him, swinging herself via the thread. She unwrapped herself in the process, and started wrapping the thread around the opponent's neck.

The enemy swiped at her with his claws, but she was spinning around his neck too fast to hit, he tried to shake her off, but she was already far too bound up with the thread. None of his shaking around achieved anything.

Eventually, Hornet reached the end of the thread, stepping on the enemy's shoulder. Then she pulled back the thread with a cry of “Sharpen!”.

The Traitor Lord's neck was cut thousands of times in an instant. A fountain of infected blood blossomed from the wound, and the sound the creature made was indescribable.

However, Hornet had put all her soul into that attack. She had nothing left, and the enemy was still alive. He raised a claw, and Hornet thought about giving up.

But only for a single moment.

Taking a hold of her nail, Hornet used pure physical strength to plunge it right into the open wound of the enemy's neck. He shuddered for a moment, and then his claw fell back down, and his body collapsed into the ground.

Utterly spent, Hornet collapsed along with him. She breathed heavily and her vision swam due to the overexertion... But she was victorious.

One last time, she saw the scene of Little Ghost's fight. He was as strong as usual, but that time he actually received help from another bug, who died in the process.

After that the world became pure white, and Hornet's last thought before fading back to unconsciousness, was that she had actually done rather well for herself.

+0+

After some time of unconsciousness, Hornet opened her eyes and found herself back at the junk pit. She attempted to get up, but her body screamed at her at the first movement, and Hornet decided to wait a little bit more. She looked around and saw that the strange bug from before had disappeared, and she was completely alone.

As she slowly recovered, Hornet thought about what had happened, what it meant, and what she could do about it. However, even after spending a long time on that, she was incapable of making a decision. Eventually, she recovered enough to stand up again, and decided that, if she didn't know what to do, then it was only natural to get help.

Hornet was going to talk with Sage Bardoon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first trial is complete. However, the trials from here on are going to be a lot more... involved.


End file.
